Day 4 Seale Trial: Something Deeper

Prosecutors and defense attorneys in the James Ford Seale federal kidnapping trial selected 12 jurors and three alternates after a contentious juror striking process Monday morning.

Special Litigation Counsel Paige Fitzgerald, arguing for the U.S. government, challenged the strikes Seale's defense selected, the first five of which included four strikes against African-American juror candidates.

In all, the defense struck six black and two white jurors. At the beginning of Monday's striking process, 34 juror candidates remained, 14 of whom were black. The final jury, with alternates, included four black jurors. U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate did not find any evidence of discrimination in the striking process.

Earlier Monday, the judge either denied or delayed ruling on several motions from the defense to eliminate evidence from the trial.

One of the motions sought to eliminate a letter Seale had reportedly written to the editor of the Franklin Advocate in July 1964, two months after the deaths of Charles Moore and Henry Dee. In the letter, prosecutors say Seale expressed racial animus that demonstrates his motive in kidnapping Moore and Dee, two 19-year-old African Americans, in Franklin County that year.

Though Seale had suspected Dee of contributing to the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi, prosecutors argued, he had no cause to kidnap Moore other than his race.

"It was something deeper than that. It was race based," argued U.S. Trial Attorney Eric Gibson.

Wingate delayed a ruling on admitting the Franklin Advocate letter. He denied the defense's motion to remove universal language about the Ku Klux Klan, an organization to which Seale allegedly belonged.

"(The government) needs to convict the defendant on evidence, not against the Klan in Mississippi," Federal Public Defender Kathy Nester argued.

"This is an organization that is emblazoned in the mind of everyday folks. It is not something that can be divorced from reality," Gibson replied.

Opening statements began at 2:15 p.m. today in the James O. Eastland Federal Building in Jackson.